ANEKED Gambia Students Essay Competition (2nd Winner)

Isatou wrote a poem entitled "My Human Rights" which articulates her struggles as a young person who feels like she does not have a voice to express herself freely. Her poem was selected amongst eight submissions, including a short drama by students from John Pickering Senior Secondary School, Shiekh Mass Kah Senior Secondary School, Babylon Senior Secondary School, and Kotu Senior Secondary School.

Isatou was awarded a certificate for her particpation and a Memory House canvas bag for herself. She also won a copy of the book, The Dictator is Us: My Truth Commission Journey by Alagie Saidy Barrow for her school library donated by Pa Baboucarr Gaye (Pa Babou), a Gambian American living in Massachusetts, USA. Pa Babou’s goal for sharing the book is to shed light on the “…dark history of injustice and brutality [in The Gambia] where most victims could have been forgotten…”

The competition is an ongoing activity and part of ANEKED’s education programs at Memory House designed to engage young people in promoting a culture of respect for human rights, democracy, and the rule of law in The Gambia after 22 years of dictatorship by the previous regime.

The African Network against Extrajudicial Killings and Enforced Disappearances, ANEKED Gambia Chapter is a civil society organization that campaigns against enforced disappearances and summary executions. The organization officially launched a permanent memorialization center/museum called Memory House, the first of its kind in The Gambia in October 2021.

My Human Rights

A poem by Isatou B Jallow 

It pains

My body drains

My brain hurts

My soul burns

Firelights and flames

Word rains like pestles from the sky

It ached and pained like arrows from the ground,

How I wish they realize my worth,

How I wish they give me a chance to speak

How I wish they allow me to lead even for once, how I wish!!!

My rights are violated

I'm always molested

Chased and rejected

Laughed at and hated

Abandoned and betrayed

They said my voice should not be heard

Because I'm a human so I have no right

Oh! What a world full of miseries

Look at me, at this young age, 1 look so thin and old like a zombie,

I get confused with thinking,

I think till thoughts tinned from my thought.

They said I'm mad but that's right though,

because life pushed me to the wall that I can't resist.

Oh! What a world full of miseries

Look at me, at this young age,

I look so thin and old like a zombie,

I get confused with thinking,

I think till thoughts tinned from my thought.

They said I'm mad but that's right though,

because life pushed me to the wall that I can't resist.

Oh God! I wish you know how I'm feeling The rejections and betrayals

I had,

The insults I had when I speak,

The abandonment I had even from families.

But hey listen!

Didn't I have the right to choose what suits me

I mean didn't I have the right to educate myself

Didn't I have the right to disagree when I'm too,

Didn't I have the right for justice to prevail

And fight for injustice happening around

Didn't I have the right to choose whom I should be with

Just a second let me speak!

I'm a human but I have the rights

I'm a human but that doesn't mean I'm powerless,

Voiceless and helpless.

Even life seems meaningless,

Because their actions made me think futureless.

Tasteless and restless all these times,

If their words can't stop coming,

Then I won't stop speaking and fighting

Because I'm a human with rights

So let justice prevail!

Isatou B. Jallow

Grade 11 Zainab One

Kotu Senior Secondary School